A CPAP frame of mind

I shouldn't have been surprised this morning, when I was watching the Today show, eating my granola (homemade) and drinking my coffee (freshly ground and French press brewed), to see a ResMed CPAP mask.

Yesterday, news of a new study saying CPAP therapy can help to ward off memory decline burned up the Interwebs (141 articles at last check)—and the Today show was on it.

All this publicity on the study got Managing Editor Theresa and I thinking: Will staving off memory decline and possibly Alzheimer's for about 10 years be the push that shoves people who suspect they have a sleep disorder to get tested, and if they're found to have a disorder, to commit to their CPAP therapy?

After the Today show segment, I suspect there were a lot of wives having conversations with their husbands (and vice versa, of course) and a lot of adult children having conversations with their baby boomer parents.

“You know Mike uses a CPAP device,” my dad told me this morning (he and my mom watch the kid on Fridays). “Gerry does, too.”

First it was a CPAP machine on Mike & Molly, then a CPAP mask on the Today show and now my dad talking about friends using CPAP machines—I think we're getting somewhere.

If we're getting somewhere with awareness, we still have a ways to go with compliance, however. About half of the providers who responded to a recent HME Newspoll reported compliance rates that fall between 51% and 75% (Read my story in the HME Newswire on Monday for the full story). That could be better, I'm sure we'd all agree.

All of this, combined with a session at the HME News Business Summit on connected health in sleep therapy, proves I've been in a CPAP frame of mind lately.

But don't worry Theresa. I'm not plotting to take over your beat.